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Monday, February 16, 2009

Stand-Up comedy has so many variables that come with it. You can control a lot of things but when it comes to people in the crowd you just never know. Friday night the San Francisco Clubhouse was packed on the 5th floor. A party of 40 was also in attendance. Because they all knew each other and traded conversation between themselves the volume of "background" noise at the show was louder than usual. The host went up and started the show hoping to calm them down a little. About five minuets in a guy by the door starting to yell things out. None of the comments really made much sense. But they were loud and distracting. As this played out I sat in the green room with friends when we noticed the volume of shouting had gone up. A lot. I walked out of the green room and stepped inside the show room to pandemonium. I can imagine that the host had gotten into it with this crazy heckler and instead of calming down the heckler only got more intense. Eventually one of the comics on the show went over and asked him to quiet down. His response is classic. "This is a comedy show!"Why is it that almost every drunk idiot whose choses to yell dumb shit out at a comic say this as some justification for their amazing and galling attitude? One other thing, the comic who went over to this guy is one of the sweetest girls I know. So yelling at her constitutes an act of extreme assholeness on a larger than normal scale. This in turn caused the comic who was working the door to come over. Thats when things went from bad to worse. The heckler was something out of a 80's Bruce Willis movie. He could of been the bad guys side kick or a henchmen. He wasn't that tall but he was obviously muscular. He had what sounded like a New Jersey accent complete with a cold chain around his turtle neck. His date was of course a stunningly hot petite woman. Once again why do ass holes always have hot girlfriends?When I turned the corner and walked into the showroom I saw the door guy standing a few inches from the red face of this guy throwing a tantrum rarely seen in someone his age. He was being told to leave to no avail. His girl kept trying to reason with him. He kept yelling at her to sit down. Then, the lights came up. By this point the crowd was chanting "GO! GO! GO!" Other audience members came over to where the altercation was going down and tried to help. I stood next to the scene convinced a punch was going to be thrown any second wondering exactly what I could do if or when that happened. The moron kept shouting something like, "You come over here and touch me!" Eventually he left. When 200 people are chanting leave and you refuse, you are a huge ass hole.Saturday night was Valentines Day. It was a huge success! The show sold out in advance so the Clubhouse smartly added a second show two floors up. This got mildly confusing to people coming in late. They showed up to the 5th floor and got told to go up to the 7th floor. It was a bit like Donkey Kong without the barrels and ape. With three women on the show, a blond, a brunet and a red head, I felt like a Neapolitan of pussy had opened for me! Sweet!I spent most of the first show breaking up a young beautiful couple in the front row. priceless! Then, after getting the light more than once I said good night and ran up to the 7th floor where I basically walked on and started again. This crowd was a bit more sedate than the first but after awhile we got going and all went well.Not bad